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SUFFOLK COUNTY---Nine people have been arrested as district attorney squad detectives, county police, agents from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, agents assigned to the Attorney General's Organized Crime Task Force, and state tax enforcement unit investigators executed search warrants at the New York City homes of suspected smugglers of untaxed cigarettes. Warrants were executed last month in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island.
"The defendants arraigned in district court this morning are suspects who are charged with the illegal purchase and transport of tens of thousands of cartons of untaxed cigarettes", Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota said. "Thousands of the untaxed contraband was purchased by these men from our undercover officers at a sting location on the south shore of Suffolk County".
The district attorney explained the nine-month joint investigation established the illegal trafficking of untaxed cigarette cartons "for an average price of $22 each".
"The defendants who were our regular customers at our sting location resold the $22 carton in New York city for an average mark-up - per carton - of $55," Spota said.
The investigation began in December of 2005. Including this week's arrests, more than 170 people were arrested on felony charges of possession or transport of more than 30,000 untaxed cigarettes, a D felony punishable by a maximum prison term of seven years.
A Staten Island suspect, Ashraf Liqiania, 34, is charged with possession of a forged instrument, a C felony punishable by a maximum term of 15 years in prison. Investigators seized thousands of counterfeit tax stamps and gear used by traffickers to affix the bogus stamps to cigarette packs prior to resale in New York City.
The tax on one pack of cigarettes in New York State is $1.50 or $15 per carton. In New York City, the cigarette tax, per pack, is an additional $1.50, for a total of three dollars per pack in the five boroughs. 9-14-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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